Articles Posted in Truck Accidents

According to a recent news feature from the Boston Herald, authorities responded to a Quincy car accident on a Saturday night and found something that surprised them. Authorities reported defendant told them he was “an Idiot” for using a cigarette lighter to light his cigarette when he had gun powder in the front seat of his vehicle. This apparently to led to an explosion resulting in his eyebrows and eye lashes being burned off, at which point he is said to have crashed into a guardrail, resulting in serious, but non-life threatening injuries.

Authorities say they found bomb-making materials in his car and then obtained a warrant to search his home. During this search, authorities allegedly found precursor components, detonators and an incendiary device.

Prosecutors charged defendant with multiple counts of possession of a destructive device and possession of components used to make a destructive device. He is currently in Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where court officials chose to hold his arraignment. During his arraignment, defendant was lying in a hospital bed with camera crews in his room. Defendant was seen trying to cover his face with a washcloth, saying he did not want to be on television, but then accidentally removed the washcloth too early, as his face was clearly captured by TV cameras. Though he is physically in a Boston hospital recovering from his car crash injuries, he is technically being held by the Quincy District Court without bond and will be transferred to the jail when he able to leave the hospital. It should be noted, he has not been convicted of any crimes and these are merely allegations.
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According to a recent news article from the Boston Globe, a two-car accident left a box truck with one wheel and most of the cab handing off the side of an elevated portion of Interstate 93 in Dorchester. The crash involved a box truck and Scion.

While investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the accident, much of their initial focus was on a complex rescue operation. According to a Massachusetts State Police spokesperson, the box truck hit a guardrail after colliding with the Scion and was launched on top of the concrete barrier at the edge of the roadway. This particular section of Interstate 93 was elevated above a series of railroad tracks and the South Quincy T station. MBTA personnel shut down the heavily used Red line T station and the immediate area was evacuated of all passengers. This also affected MBTA Commuter Rail service, due to the box truck dangling over the tracks. MBTA used a shuttle bus service to take passengers to the next operating station, though this added a significant amount of time to an already lengthy commute for thousands of riders.

Massachusetts State Police troops and Boston firefighters coordinated the operation using a large boom truck to lift the box truck off the side of roadway and get it ready to be towed away from the scene so rush hour traffic and train service could resume as soon as possible. Both drivers were apparently injured in this truck accident, and EMTs transported them to local Boston hospitals. There has be no report on either driver’s medical condition, and authorities have not charged anyone with a crime in connection with this car accident as of this time.
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Our Boston car accident lawyers know the doctrine of Respondeat Superior may be a valuable tool to help a plaintiff achieve a full and appropriate financial recovery.

According to a recent story in the Bangor Daily News, in Maine, a man was arrested who had an outstanding warrant from Massachusetts, where he is suspected of being the driver in a hit-and-run car accident in which the victim died.

Defendant was arrested on a charge of being a fugitive from justice. If a person has a warrant for his or her arrest and gets arrested in a different state, the state in which the arrest occurs will charge the defendant with the crime of being a fugitive from justice. This is not a true crime in the normal sense, but rather is used as a mechanism to legally hold the defendant until the state that issued the warrant can take custody of the defendant. This is what is commonly referred to as the extradition and rendition process.
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The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently made several critical safety recommendations. The letter urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to adopt the proposed regulations in order to make the roads safer by reducing the risk of truck collisions.

Truck accidents are typically among the most serious collisions that occur, and preventing these types of crashes needs to be a top priority. Truckers also need to do their part to prevent collisions. If an accident happens because of a careless trucker, a Boston truck accident lawyer can help victims or their family members to pursue a claim for compensation.
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The federal government plays an integral role in monitoring truck company safety and compliance. In addition to making laws, inspections, and enforcement, the government also tracks violations and accidents to determine a trucking company’s safety record. According to a new report and recommendations by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, the data used to calculate trucking company safety wasn’t adequate to measure individual carriers.

Trucking company safety records are important for ensuring compliance, raising standards, and in the event of an accident. Our Boston truck accident attorneys are committed to protecting the rights of victims and in raising awareness to improve safety on the roads. In the event of a truck accident, our legal team will review safety reports, private and public records, and determine the cause of the accident. It is our priority to hold trucking companies responsible to prevent future accidents and injuries.
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Hours-of-service rules set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) are designed to limit the amount of time truckers can drive. The goal of these limits (which prohibit driving for more than 11 hours per day and require a 34-hour rest break after 60 hours of driving in a week) is to prevent drowsy driving crashes. Unfortunately, the rules are often difficult to enforce and truckers still too often drive when they are fatigued.

In an effort to try to make the hours-of-service rules easier to enforce, and thus more effective, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has issued a new proposed rule that would require the use of electronic logbooks for the commercial bus and trucking industry. The FMCSA believes that this would cut down on burdensome paperwork requirements and would help to reduce the risk of truck collisions.
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According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), close to 1,500 cargo tank rollovers are reported each year. That’s an average of about 4 rollovers each and every day.

It’s important that we understand a few key factors in preventing these kinds of accidents. The FMCSA has launched “Keep the Load on the Road” resource, an educational video to provide us with the safe-driving habits we need to prevent these kinds of accidents.

Our Boston accident lawyers understand that more than half (56 percent) of these accidents happen on straight roads — not on curves or on ramps. About a third of these accidents occur during the daylight, rather than during nighttime hours. More than 90 percent of these rollover happen on dry roads as well. Rollovers can happen at any time, so drivers can never be too comfortable behind the wheel.
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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration made a change to the rules related to the number of hours that truckers could drive back in December of 2011. The new rules aimed to reduce the risk of drowsy driving crashes caused by truck drivers who worked for long hours and who could start to zone out or even fall asleep due to fatigue.

Our Boston truck driving accident lawyers know that there was a great deal of disagreement about the new FMCSA rule after its passage, including a court action filed by professional truck driving associations in an attempt to block the rule change due to the FMCSA’s process of creating the new requirement. In August, the court largely upheld the FMCSA’s new hours-of-service limits with a slight modification, though, so now the rules have gone into effect despite ongoing disagreements between truckers and safety advocates about whether the rules go far enough or will be effective at preventing accidents.
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